


from the ground up

by corvidity



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Reconciliation and Forgiveness, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:18:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16225613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidity/pseuds/corvidity
Summary: After the fighting ends, Takasugi retreats from the world to plant a garden. He soon finds that solitude is hard-won, and that nothing is so easily left behind.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in a post-canon future that draws very little from current canon (vagueness abounds!), so there are about -0.03 spoilers. If you wanted a timeline anyway, I’d say it’s mostly canon compliant through Silver Soul, but diverges after the two year time-skip - Gintoki didn’t leave Edo and the Yorozuya didn’t disband, but Takasugi disappeared.

Takasugi arrives back to a Kabukicho in the thick of rebuilding, his feet sore and heart weary of wandering. After a life of tearing the world down, he feels ready for something different. He’s tired of burning and salting the earth; destruction has run its course in him, and he is, unbelievably, sick of the dead and dying. What more vengeance is there to be had?

He finds the tumbledown remains of a farmstead on the outskirts of Edo where the wilderness snarls like a street dog at the end of a gravel-picked path. The idea of living so near the forest and the dark, damp tangle of its vegetation holds a certain appeal; the beast inside him, far from being dead, is only asleep. He doubts he’ll ever hear the end of its tapering howl, but he can live with that -- the echoes of his past, on the edge of the unknown, the monster in his heart sated by proximity to its kind.

Though the fields are overgrown and choked with weeds, the house is habitable, abandoned by its previous owners. He throws open the windows, scrubs out the mould stains, disposes of the food that has gone off in the rusted tip he finds a distance from the house.

Within a few weeks of back-breaking work, he picks clean a good portion of the fields, uncovering in the process what was once a garden -- between the dead trees and branches are fallen lanterns, scattered gravel, even moss-covered stones arranged around a dry hollow. Once the fields are acceptably clear, he uses the tools he’d found in the shed of farming equipment to fix the fence bordering the property. (Not that there is much to keep out.)

Owls and foxes punctuate his solitude, their night-time chatter a language he is glad not to understand. Was this how Shouyou had lived soon after he emerged into the world from Utsuro’s shadow? Wiping the sweat from his brow, calloused fingers tugging at his straw hat. Seeking a better path.  

In the mornings, he is woken by birds alternately screeching and cawing. The dirt-lined road, dry and dusty after weeks without rain, bears only his tracks. Takasugi can’t help but wonder how many miles his old teacher walked in search of repentance.

“You must have wanted something more than that, surely?” he asks, and receives only birdsong in reply. Takasugi looks out at the dark line of trees marking the forest’s boundary, and wonders what the garden would’ve looked like when someone still cared.  

 

+++

 

Without a war, former war criminals merit little attention in Kabukicho. The hulking green Amanto that sells him a dozen packets of seeds, a few saplings, and three bags of fertiliser does not seem to know him, and if he does, makes no mention of it.

“It is a good time to be growing things,” the ogre says. “It is always a good time, but now is a better time than most.”   

What kind of garden Takasugi will create, he doesn’t know. But he’ll do as he pleases, as he always has. The earth is stubborn at first, yielding only with much effort. The knots in his back tend to seize up after hours bending over, old war wounds and the bruises of a life lived at twice the speed and stress it should be finally catching up. It doesn’t stop him enjoying the toil of his daily work, the uprooting and replanting, digging his hands into the cool embrace of the earth and watching the dirt work its way under his fingernails, softening his skin as it might when he’s finally dead and buried.

_Was this what you wanted, Shouyou?_

Again, the birds sing.

 

+++

 

The weather is kind, albeit unusually dry; whatever rains arrive are quick showers, not the deep, cleansing downpours a new garden needs. Regardless, it gives Takasugi more time to work. There is little else to do anyway, and little else he wants to do. He plants trees around the larger rocks to create the illusion they had meant to fall as they did; he clears the gravel path, picking weeds and scattering new white pebbles along its winding length. In a sheltered corner of the garden, some distance from the back of the house but still visible to one who knows where to look, he plants a single black pine.     

Eventually, the bird calls become less a ball of indecipherable white noise and more an intricate tangle of trills and chirps unique to the various species that roost in the surrounds. It’s their warning cries that alert him one overcast morning to a new, unknown presence down the road. Straightening up, he wanders out with the shovel he’d been using.

At the gate is a tall man, unmistakably a samurai by the wooden sword at his hip. “Takasugi-san,” says the stranger, tilting the brim of his hat up. “It’s been a while. I’m glad to see you.”

Takasugi drives the shovel into the ground. “Did Gintoki send you, Shimura?”

“Please, call me Shinpachi.” He removes his hat, smiling earnestly. “And no, I was only chasing rumours. Gin-san had nothing to do with it. He’s too busy not running the Yorozuya these days.”   

“Typical,” Takasugi snorts. “You’ve come to talk, then? To get me to come out of hiding, give myself up to the authorities? I hardly think you’re here to reminisce over the old days.”

“Actually, I came to listen to you.”

The swiftness of Shinpachi’s rely, and the quiet seriousness that underlines it, momentarily takes Takasugi aback. For the first time, he finds himself evaluating Shinpachi as Shinpachi, and not as an extension of Gintoki. Gone is the boy who had trailed his master around like a puppy; he is, as much as Takasugi dislikes the term, his own man now -- a samurai in his own right. That itself demands some recognition, at the very least. Sighing, he unlatches the gate and jerks the shovel back up. “Fine. But just this once.”   

“Of course,” Shinpachi replies. Falling into step beside Takasugi, he nods at the shovel. “Were you working out the back?”

“Aren’t you here to listen?”

“Indeed, Takasugi-san. I’m listening for your answer.”

Perhaps letting Shinpachi in was a mistake. “Do you speak this way with Gintoki?”

“Only when he acts like a child, which is most of the time.”

Takasugi drags his free hand over his bandages, trying to delay the onset of a headache. “Did you come here to accuse me, after all? I assure you, I’m not digging a grave or burying the evidence of my crimes.” Irritation mounting, he directs Shinpachi off the path and onto the grass, leading him around the back. “You see? It’s a garden.”

He doesn’t expect Shinpachi to break into such a wide, delighted smile, or for his expression to soften into the child he once was -- and still is. Gintoki had always disguised his affections in sarcastic, passive-aggressive barbs, but Shinpachi has no such compulsions. “This is amazing, Takasugi-san! And you’re doing all the work by yourself? It must’ve taken months to get this far.”

“Four months now, not that it concerns you.”

Shinpachi turns to him, serious again. “What made you want to create a garden?”

It’s a good question, and Takasugi takes in the sight of the scattered tools and potted trees like he could glean from them the answer. “This country has changed,” he finally says. “It has destroyed itself better than I could ever hope to do. There’s no point in killing something that no longer exists. I am here to live the rest of my days alone, away from the court of public opinion and inanity. Let them remember me however they wish: a criminal, a martyr, a rebel or samurai. I do not care.

“And you must know I am not a young man anymore --” he scoffs, “and there is nothing worse than growing old and being pitied for it, made to feel like a burden. If you came to listen, then listen well: I will die here, alone and in as much peace as this world will permit me.”

A small frown etches itself on Shinpachi’s forehead, and then smooths out before it can deepen. “In that case,” he says, “I am glad you’ll leave something good behind.” The wind begins to rise, the first drops of rain darkening the ground at their feet. “I should get going. It was nice to see you again, Takasugi-san. Take care.”

Takasugi watches Shinpachi’s figure dwindle into the distance, swallowed by the first bend in the road. He keeps watching until the rain thickens, and the tracks Shinpachi left soften into mud.

 

+++     

 

It’s hardly surprising when Shinpachi returns a few days later. Any disciple of Gintoki’s had to have a combination of tenacity and idiocy that went beyond the norm.

“I should have known better than to believe you,” Takasugi says, the smoke of his kiseru coiling in an aggravated spiral. “Your kind never listen.”

The birds chatter around them, sounding suspiciously like a rebuke: _And neither do you. Or have you forgotten what you were like as a boy?_

“I heard you last time,” Shinpachi insists. “Every single word. I’m not here to carry your burdens. I just want to help with your garden, for however long it takes to be finished. Then I’ll gladly leave you alone.”

“And what is driving this noble act of charity? Why do you want to help?”

Shinpachi shrugs. “Returning a favour, I suppose. You fought harder and longer than most of us in the last stretch of fighting, while covering our backs the entire time. This retirement of yours is fully deserved. I just thought I could help you get a head start on your peace.”

Their alliance had not been firm friendship, only a formality. “Have you forgotten,” Takasugi drawls, allowing the smoke to colour his words coarse, “that before then, there were numerous times when I tried to kill you and everyone you hold dear?”

“No, of course not.” Something of Shouyou’s patience takes root in Shinpachi’s expression, his warm and amused reply. “But when was the last time you genuinely tried to kill any of us?”  

He looks, strangely, almost like a younger version of Takasugi, fierce and stubborn to a fault -- convinced he will not become a burden, or another regret in a long line of them. Someone who will break the deadlock and make the difference, to save a person who knows they are not fit or deserving of salvation.

“Go back home,” Takasugi says, a touch of steel in his voice. “The world you belong to is out there.”

“It’s your world too, Takasugi-san. The one you helped save. Please,” and now some of Shinpachi’s composure cracks. “I won’t get in your way. I’ll do as you say. Just give me a chance.”

A single chance, as thin and prehensile as a strand of spider’s silk. _Children,_ he thinks. _The same no matter what era they grow up in. They’d seize anything if they think it would help._ The air stirs, taking with it a cloud of smoke. Knowing what he does now, would he have turned down the chance to fight in the first war? Would he have made himself a coward if it could’ve saved Shouyou? The Takasugi now says, yes, a thousand times over. The Takasugi then was little more than a boy, and that boy would not have been convinced that laying down arms could have had a better outcome than taking them up. What precisely would he have told his younger self? To go home too, to keep his head down and wait for everyone around him to fail?

“Until the garden is finished,” he sighs. “And then I want you gone.”

Shinpachi bows from the waist. “Thank you so much, Takasugi-san; I won’t let you down. And you have my word as a samurai: once the garden is complete, it’ll be like I was never here.”

Even flowers grow over battlefields where bodies had lain, bloodied and broken; the worst excesses of war washed clean by rain. But Takasugi knows better than to trust nature. Things tend to get left behind. There are always lived consequences. In another time, they were either bad or worse. Now, maybe, there is bad, and slightly better than bad.

“We’ll see,” Takasugi says. “We’ll see.”

 

+++

 

Shinpachi is a quiet and efficient worker in the garden, and well-mannered to the point of suspicion. Putting up with Gintoki for so many years might have something to do with it.

Secretly, Takasugi is glad for another pair of hands, and young hands at that, which can do the heavy lifting he can’t. It’s unexpectedly amusing to order Shinpachi around: buy this sapling, move that pot, put that stone over there. Small, trivial tasks when compared to the orders he gave as Kiheitai commander. There’s a world of difference between calling for an assassination and telling Shinpachi not to water the new gingko trees so effusively.

“You’ll drown them,” he snaps. _Make it look like an accidental drowning._

 _Your orders will be executed, Lord Shinsuke._ “Sorry, Takasugi-san! Is this better?”

He wonders where Takechi and Matako are now, and if they would recognise him. The refined, regal commander they had come to know is not who he is anymore. It was never who he wanted to be, though the war had shaped out of him a leader of men, an inspirer of so-called heroics. To Takasugi, commanding soldiers in wartime had only ever been to take responsibility for lives other than the one he’d wanted to save above all.     

Shinpachi turns to him, waving the watering can. “Takasugi-san?”

He surfaces in the present, takes the can from Shinpachi. “Like this, alright? I’m not repeating myself, I’ve got a hedge to plant.”

 _Mission accomplished, my lord._ “Ah, I see. Thank you for showing me!”

 

+++

 

Soon, a rock garden springs from a sea of white pebbles. Plum, katsura and satsuma trees line the path next to cherry, gingko and pine. As the trees multiply, so too do the birds with their sharp, hungry beaks, and Shinpachi ends up bringing in some netting to place over the fruit trees.  

Takasugi does not think himself an ungracious host (a war criminal he was, but a criminal with class), and he dislikes owing debts as much as anyone. He takes to offering Shinpachi tea -- nothing fanciful (like Shinpachi himself), just matcha that they take on the back porch after a few hours’ work, their hands washed clean of soil. Those same hands hold another kind of earth in the fired clay cups, tea leaves spinning in water that magnifies each bump and granule.

He doesn’t know when they start talking about more than the garden, but to Takasugi it creeps up in frighteningly natural fashion. The birds sing, the foxes bark, and he and Shinpachi speak, conversation that usually ebbs and flows around the outside world. Alone, it was easy to lose himself in the garden; through Shinpachi, he sees old comrades and foes, a grand and sprawling network of people from all over Edo.

Shinpachi avidly tells him of his and sister’s efforts to revitalise the family dojo: “Gin-san is a part-time instructor now. He’s quite popular with the younger students.” It amuses and puzzles Takasugi to think his old comrade would have the long-suffering patience to deal with children, let alone teach them swordsmanship.    

“Does Gintoki know you’re doing this?”   

For a moment, Shinpachi closes his eyes and inhales the scent of his tea. “I’ve mentioned it to him, yes. He didn’t say anything I think you’d find interesting.”

“I take it that means he ran his mouth off at me.”

“You know him well,” smiles the young man, and Takasugi feels his own mouth twisting up wryly in response. “You haven’t spoken to Gin-san since the end of the fighting, have you? I don’t think he’d mind seeing you again, even if it was just running into you on the street… Ah.” Shinpachi rubs the back of his head sheepishly, having caught the expression on Takasugi’s face. “Too soon?”

It isn’t a matter of time, but the paths they chose afterwards. Though they hadn’t parted badly, they’d reached a mutual understanding -- each going their own ways, each moving on as they saw fit. No looking back, no more digging themselves deeper into the gnarled roots of their past. Takasugi no longer wants to confront the world when it has taken so much out of and from him; can’t he enjoy the rest of his life in peace, without making peace?

Then again, when had he ever been so lucky.

 

+++

 

The garden takes firmer shape, the trees take deeper root, and soon enough, they’re doing more watering, pruning, and checking for pests and disease than planting. Sometimes, Takasugi even allows Shinpachi to rake a new pattern in the white pebbles of the rock garden.

Still, the garden is not complete. The old restlessness in his bones, his drive for perfection, tells him there is more to do. The birds and crickets, the anonymous rustling at night; all are messages: _something is missing._ One day, he looks to the pine tree in its corner, eye straying to the hollow dip beside it where water used to run. Mistaking his contemplation for satisfaction, Shinpachi grins. “We’re near the finish line.”

“Not yet,” Takasugi replies.   

In the weeks that follow, he prepares the drainage, sources the water, scrapes the worst of the moss off the rocks. Shinpachi takes to the final piece of the garden with frankly alarming alacrity, waving catalogue after catalogue of koi fish under his nose. It makes Takasugi feel older than his years, like some beleaguered guardian to a child who hasn’t yet learned despair or despondency, or who has and decided, somehow, to ignore both. Shouyou would have laughed, surely. But where else does his old teacher expect Takasugi to place those old enmities, the jadedness carved from years of bitter experience? Where can he put them down?

Shinpachi moves effortlessly in the present, enviously so. He takes charge of ordering the koi (which they’ve chosen between them), and transports the box to the garden one bright morning for release. The koi flash orange, yellow, black and white as they slide into the water, fanning out like leaves.

“Aren’t they pretty?” Shinpachi gushes. “Like moving art.”

One lingers where Takasugi released it, golden fins rippling, bending sunlight. Its black markings are dusted across its body, a smattering situated around one eye.

It goggles at him, as if waiting for something. Slowly, Takasugi reaches out. His finger hovers over the surface, just above the head of the fish. The water is cold as he flicks it up. “Go,” he tells the koi, and with a flick of its tail, it does.

 

+++

 

Shinpachi comes back the next day and presents him with a tin of tea.

“What’s this?” A curl of smoke rises from Takasugi’s kiseru, coiling into the early morning air.

“Your garden is finished now, isn’t it? This is a, well, a garden-warming and farewell gift, I suppose.” Shinpachi offers the tin again, but Takasugi does not move to take it. “It’s what we agreed on. Once the garden is done, I’ll leave you alone. A samurai always keeps his promises.” He looks a little sad, somewhat wistful, but hides it well.

Takasugi does not take the gift. He wonders, instead: _why tea?_  

It’s admittedly one of the few things on which they’d found common ground, both able to while away an afternoon debating the merits of shinca versus matcha, or the correct temperatures at which to steep certain leaves. They’d agreed that Japanese teas were superior to the imported ones now overtaking supermarket shelves, consisting mostly of new Amanto blends marketed with exotic fragrances and tea-picking locales. What difference did it make if the leaves had been picked at perilously high altitudes, or from the edges of dragon-infested forests? What was important was the taste, the quality of the leaves.

“The taste of suffering is bitter,” Takasugi had said, and Shinpachi’s head dipped like a crane’s in agreement. “Yes, and haven’t we already have our share of it?”

 _Yes,_ Takasugi thinks. _I’ve had enough._ Moving to the edges of the forest, the ancient beyond the old, he had not wanted any more suffering or pretence, only to find the rest he’d craved for so long. But though there is no war, there is no peace for him either. The missing something, the gap he had tried to fill with the garden -- it is something he has always feared, and never wanted to face.  

“Takasugi-san?”

There is no escape after all; no ending, no completion without acceptance. And Shouyou, too, had learned this: that when he took on a burden, he took it all -- the sympathy, the kindness, even if he thought he deserved none of it -- and that it came with a price.

_You did not want to leave us, as much as we did not want you to leave. Isn’t that right, Sensei?_

“I,” Takasugi starts, and wonders when the last time was he started a sentence without knowing how it would end. “That is, the garden is not complete. I cannot accept your gift.”    

“Oh,” says Shinpachi, and then smiles. “That’s all right, then. Shall we have this tea? It’s one of the first crop of shincha this season. Then you can show me what else needs doing.”

Somewhere, the birds are singing.

  

+++

 

There is, truth be told, little more to be done, but Shinpachi doesn’t seem to mind. Most days, there’s more conversation than gardening, and though Takasugi would never admit it, he finds Shinpachi’s company just about enjoyable (apart from the short campaign he put up to name every one of the koi).    

Winter descends on them with little fanfare, the daylight hours shortening quietly, the mantle of darkness falling sooner and sooner. Before long, light snow begins to fall, and still Shinpachi comes to do general maintenance. He and Takasugi take the precaution of building supports for the larger trees, and check that the pond is deep enough to leave the koi in over winter.

Their habitual tea and conversation moves indoors as winter deepens, with Shinpachi bringing his own tea and leftover snacks from time to time (“we buy them in bulk for our students, but sometimes we get extras”), and even his sister’s ‘improved’ tamagoyaki.  

One particularly cold evening towards the end of the year, Takasugi breaks out a bottle of heated saké. Though Shinpachi insists he drinks only in moderation, the alcohol and conversation end up flowing freely. “Gin-san won’t come out from the kotatsu. _Again_ ,” he mutters. “Always at this time of year, he won’t leave the kotatsu.”  

“I’m not surprised,” Takasugi says. “Damned idiot hogged all the woollen blankets in winter when the rest of us were freezing our asses off.”

“That sounds exactly like Gin-san,” Shinpachi agrees. “Who does he think pays for the electricity? And the rent?” He stares gloomily at his half-full cup. “And he still gets drunk, too. We can never get him to shut up. He talks about everything. Sometimes you. ‘That damned Takasugi,’ he’ll say. ‘Who does he think he is, getting to hide out in a garden? He can’t run forever from the Final Fantasy phenomenon. He’s got to face the facts sooner or later. And the facts are simple: nobody misses him.’” Shinpachi blinks, and shakes his head. “I might’ve said too much.”

“Hah,” Takasugi mumbles. “I knew it. I… miss…” he frowns. “I don’t miss him.”

“Right,” Shinpachi replies, and stares at the now blessedly empty bottle. “Don’t you get lonely out here, Takasugi-san?”

“What, with your company?” he drawls, and Shinpachi just smiles a little blearily at him. The sober part of Takasugi is glad neither of them will remember much come morning, not even the quiet ‘thank you’ the other says, or the gruff ‘you’re welcome’ he gives in reply.   

 

+++

 

Christmas and the New Year pass amiably enough. Takasugi isn’t sure when he’d last noticed them as more than markings on a calendar, usually Matoko’s, who’d always tried in vain to bring some festive spirit to their year-long terrorist endeavours. Spring creeps around again, Shinpachi’s visits still a constant.     

“You know, Gin-san may make a fuss of not wanting to see you, but I know him.”

“I imagine he’d want to finish me off.”

Shinpachi laughs. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Takasugi-san, but you’re both very predictable. Stubborn, too. I can see why you and Gin-san were close.”

With a sigh, Takasugi exhales a long stream of smoke. “Don’t.”

They walk a few more feet in silence, Shinpachi inspecting the growth of the new trees. His usual observations on the presence of diseased leaves or pests are measured and calm, and the routine talk dulls Takasugi’s fangs, lowering his hackles. Instead, he finds himself mildly irritated that Shinpachi can reach the higher branches so easily.

“Shinpachi. Even if I told you a thousand times over that Gintoki and I are nothing alike, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

Shinpachi touches the new buds of a cherry blossom, smiling thoughtfully. “It would be easier to plant a thousand sakura trees.”

When talk of Gintoki is exhausted, Shinpachi turns the conversation to Kagura instead. She’s dividing her time between Earth and space with her father and brother, sending postcards from far-flung planets. Kamui is another face Takasugi hasn’t seen in a long time, and it secretly amuses him to imagine the baby-faced brat alongside his older, more mature sister.

“She was always meant to travel the stars, I think,” is how Shinpachi explains her adventures. “Kagura-chan isn’t bound to one planet. Earth and Rakuyo are her home, but she needed to see and help more of the universe, like an intergalactic Yorozuya Gura-san.”

“And you didn’t think to follow her?”

“She needed, and still needs, the time with her family. Yorozuya Gin-chan is her family too, of course, but Kagura-chan has more than one, just like she has more than one home. And it was the bond with her brother that needed the most time to heal. Kamui-san never said it, but he was relieved that Kagura-chan was willing to forgive him. He’s working hard now to not disappoint her.”

It is a gift of Shinpachi’s to see into people’s hearts, and Takasugi knows, again, it was a mistake to have let him in that morning.  

“Besides, my duty and family are on Earth. I’m not so self-important as to think that Edo would be worse off without me, but if there are people here who need healing or direction in their lives, and if I can provide it, then why wouldn’t I?”  

“Healing, you say.” The koi in their pond come to the water’s surface, mouthing at tiny, invisible insects. There is an entire world outside their bubble, and another one beyond the trees, still rebuilding, still healing. If this is the kind of world that has evolved since, then maybe, impossibly, there is a place for him in it.  

 

+++

 

The days, heavy with summer, blossom and sprout just as the garden does. His forays into the outside world become less frequent, Shinpachi the source of his news, ferrying to him the rise of the new order and country, and, of course, the progress of smaller and less visible things.  

“You know, I tell my students about you.”

“Students.” Takasugi takes a sip of the oolong tea Shinpachi had brought the other day. “Ah, yes, your family dojo. Training the next generation of samurai. What makes you think they’d be interested in me? There’s no longer a war to fight.”

A war that someone else started before they were born. They won’t grow bitter and jaded before their time; they won’t slope off into the wilderness seeking to satisfy their rage at the world’s injustices.

“No, no, I don’t mention your name. Just that I know a gardener.” Shinpachi looks out over the garden, then rakes his gaze back to Takasugi. “You could give lessons at the dojo.”

“I fail to see how gardening has any relevance to the way of the samurai.”

“To be a samurai is to have knowledge and appreciation of the arts. Some of my students are very good with a bow and arrow, others excel in the tea ceremony. We’ve time now to reclaim these traditions. I think it would be good to get some of the quieter students interested in gardening.”

“They shouldn’t underestimate the labour of creating a garden.”

Shinpachi places his empty teacup beside Takasugi’s. “And you should not underestimate the benefit of gardening with others.” He stands up and puts on his straw hat. “Think about it, won’t you?”

 

+++

 

Unwrapping his bandages that night, Takasugi stares at his reflection. Darker skin, less of a feral glare, the scar no longer so long and threatening. It is not necessarily a face children would run from, and surely not a face they would recognise. Would Gintoki? Katsura, or Sakamoto? Shouyou would know him anywhere, at any time. Takasugi had never been able to hide from Sensei for long.

And neither, it seems, from the world.

Without thinking it through any longer, Takasugi lets go. There’s no point resisting anymore.

 

+++

 

He turns up in a muted purple kimono, like the ones he’d worn in his war criminal heyday, but without the golden brocaded butterflies. They were far too ostentatious for what he would be (and he couldn’t quite believe this) _teaching._

Shinpachi’s astounded, and then delighted face greets him at the entrance of the Koudoukan Dojo. A crowd of similarly awestruck faces, though much younger, look up at him. “It’s the Gardener,” one girl intones. “The Gardener,” the boy next to her repeats, looking faint. “He’s real!”

Takasugi can’t help but smirk. “Shinpachi, were your tales too tall even for children to believe?”  

“They’ve never seen you before. And just for the record, I never exaggerated who you were. Much.” Shinpachi grins crookedly. “They built up their own images of you from what I told them, some of which are more, well, fantastical than others.”  

One of the bolder children tugs at his kimono, and Takasugi has never felt more real and present trying to disentangle himself.

“Settle down, now,” Shinpachi orders, gently tugging the child away. “Yes, he’s real and he’s here as a teacher, so listen well, alright?”

Takasugi manages to stifle a snort. If these children are anything like Shinpachi is, and he was, listening is not their forte. He takes up his position as teacher anyway, skirting the more delicate of their questions.

“Did you hurt your eye while gardening?” one asks, and before Shinpachi can step in, Takasugi shakes his head. “No, it was something else.” Though their demands to know are loud and insistent, he only says, “another time, perhaps”, and won’t be dragged into making a promise.

The students’ impatience, impertinence and insatiable curiosity reminds him of Gintoki, Katsura and himself back in the day, down to their eagerness to prove their worth. But the children differ in important ways -- less haunted, a fraction more disciplined, the shadows under their eyes shallower. They might even grow up stronger.  

 

+++

 

“Here,” Shinpachi hands Takasugi a cup of tea, then sits beside him on the veranda. Before them, the sunset splashes an exhalation of colours across the sky. “Soba seed stem tea. Thought you might enjoy something new.”

It’s blissfully quiet without the students’ yelling as they drink their tea, yet disquieting too, after having spent an entire day getting used to it.

“Thank you for coming,” Shinpachi says. “I have to admit, I wasn’t sure you’d turn up. I certainly hoped you would, but wasn’t certain. I’m glad you proved me wrong.”

Takasugi downs the rest of his tea, relishing the way it scalds his tongue. “I gave serious thought to your invitation. There didn’t appear to be any logic behind it. Though I might not care for how others see me, it does not mean I am impervious to the connotations. Why would you have wanted a war criminal to teach impressionable brats?”

“Then why did you come anyway?”

The lingering warmth of the cup seems to burn Takasugi’s hand. “I’m sure you know the answer as well as I do. Otherwise, you would not have asked me to teach in the first place.”

“Hm.” Shinpachi swills his remaining tea, peering at the horizon. “Allow me to tell you a story, Takasugi-san. Until last year, nobody knew where you had gone. Few cared. Even fewer cared to speculate where you could be. Gin-san figured it was best to leave you be.

“But then, rumours began circulating. The farmers who bring their wares to market spoke of a one-eyed man living on the edges of Edo. At first, I thought the chances of it being you were low. There are many other men in the world with only one eye. However, as time went on, the rumours changed. Could it be that this man was a demon clothed in human skin?”

“Sounds familiar,” Takasugi grunts.

“Yes, it struck me as well. I wondered, just maybe, if it was you. Fiction can spring from the smallest grain of truth. I didn’t think it would do any harm to go out and investigate. If there was a chance, however small, that it was indeed you, then it would be worth the trouble to see you alive and well. I thought I could even thank you properly.”      

Shinpachi heads back in to refill the teapot and pour them another round of tea before resuming his story. “You know, I really did intend not to return when you warned me against it. But then I saw your garden, how you’d tended to it so diligently month after month. Despite what you said, it wasn’t the sign of a man who resented the world. It felt to me that you were looking for something, trying to come to terms with the end of the fighting and the start of living.”

Takasugi has not touched a drop of his tea.   

“Perhaps,” Shinpachi says, in that unbearably kind, intolerably gentle way of his, “your garden was a question and an answer. Maybe, you were asking for absolution before you understood you were. And who was I not to give you that chance?”

And who can blame him for taking it, for eventually accepting that in order to gain the peace he’d exiled himself to find, he would have to return to the world he’d abandoned? Walking forward, into the future to face his past, at the hands of the next generation. In the dying light, he feels, deep down, that this is Shouyou’s final lesson.

 _Yes. This is what you were looking for, wasn’t it?_  

Takasugi finishes the rest of his now lukewarm tea, and rolls the stiffness out of his shoulders. With the last of the light gone, they go back in, feet whispering on silent floorboards. “If you’d like,” Shinpachi says, “you can take some of these tea leaves back with you. Next morning that is, since it’s too dark now to travel safely.”

“No,” Takasugi says. “But ask me again tomorrow.” He can’t do with any more kindness today.

 

+++

 

It’s on his fifth lesson with the children, teaching them the importance of asymmetry in garden design, that Gintoki appears in the yard. Shinpachi had reassured him their lessons would not overlap, so there was no chance of an uncomfortable encounter in the hallways. But there he is, finger up his nose, snowy hair unkempt as ever, studying Takasugi with those red eyes he remembers so well. Though it’s the first time he’s seen Gintoki in at least three years, the other hasn’t changed, and swaggers across to the children in the same aggravating way he remembers from their youth.

“Oh, look who it is. Takasugi.” Gintoki yawns. “Emerged from the wilds, I see.”

“It’s Gin-chan!” the students yell joyously, rushing to him before any hostility can burst open like an overripe fruit and spoil the atmosphere. “Gin-chan’s back!” one of the boys cries. “Let’s spar; I can totally beat you this time!” The girl who’d first called Takasugi Gardener, Ayako, tugs at his sleeve. “Do you know Gin-chan?”

He fights down a long-suffering sigh, and doesn’t quite succeed. “You could say that.”

“Gin-san!” Shinpachi emerges from the dojo, flustered. “What are you doing here?”

“Hm? Don’t I have a lesson today?” he obligingly ruffles the hair of the younger children who cling to his legs. “Ah, wait.”

Shinpachi groans. “Tomorrow, Gin-san. Not today.” Gintoki shrugs, completely unapologetic for the inconvenience he’s caused. “Oi, you lot. What’s Takasugi been teaching you?” His tone with the children is light, an impossible fondness to his voice. “Nothing violent, I hope.”

“Takasugi?” they murmur among themselves. “Oh, you mean Gardener-san?” the boy who’d wanted to spar, Hoji, says. “Just stuff about gardens, like the different types and what directions rocks should face.” He sidles up beside Gintoki before his next words. “No offence, Gardener-san, it’s a bit boring sometimes.”

“What?” Ayako yells. “That’s because you’re way too obsessed with winning things and ‘becoming stronger’. If you listen to what Shimura-sensei says, ‘strong’ doesn’t just mean knocking your opponent over a thousand times. It’s also about having the patience and persistence to do it. And gardening takes real patience, a real inner strength. That’s what Gardener-san tells us.”

“Well argued, Ayako.” He allows himself an indulgent smirk in Gintoki’s direction. Ayako is one of his better students, and certainly the most invested -- she had lost her father in the destruction of Kabukicho, and in the aftermath devoted herself to caring for the succulents he’d kept.

Hoji grumbles. “Yeah, I know all that, but sparring is cooler.”

“That’s because you’ve read too much JUMP!”

“Wait,” Gintoki interjects, looking aggrieved. “You can never read too much JUMP, and you can never be too old to read it. JUMP is actually the key to staying young at heart and in body. Keeps your muscles strong and teeth white.”

“Uh, Gin-san, JUMP has nothing to do with any of those things.”

“Anyway,” Ayako isn’t finished. “What Gardener-san teaches us is very useful for daily life, like how to spot the pests that eat the leaves on satsuma trees.”

“Oh, pests?” Gintoki gets that glint in his eye that Takasugi has seen before many an ill-advised escapade. “Gintoki,” he warns, worrying for an absurdly brief moment that his entire bloody past is about to come spilling out like entrails, but all his old foe does is pull a face. “You know what this little pest got up to when we were kids?”

“You two knew each other?”

“Gardener-san is a samurai too?”

Shinpachi shoots Gintoki a stern glare, catching Takasugi’s eye with a soft, apologetic glance along the way. The air trembles a moment, expectancy riding high. “He’s a stupid one,” says Gintoki, and his mouth splits open in a shit-eating grin.

They pass the afternoon lobbing embarrassing stories back and forth, the children caught up in the adventures and pranks from the halcyon days they spent in the Shouka Sonjuku. It surprises Takasugi how easily the memories return, coaxed and then bullied to the surface by Gintoki’s increasingly outrageous tales; for every story ending in young Takasugi’s loss, he searches for one where Gintoki lost, whether it was a spar or being saddled with kitchen duty. When finally their well of memories has run dry (at least for the day), Shinpachi dismisses the students.

“Will you tell us more stories next time?” Ayako asks, looking beseechingly at them before Shinpachi bundles her out.

“Well,” he mutters, “that could’ve been much worse.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gintoki pokes his forehead. “Don’t tell me you thought we were going to go at each other. Because that’s exactly what would’ve happened without the kids.” At this, Takasugi rolls his eyes, and breaks out his kiseru.

Shinpachi fetches a bowl of freshly steamed manju and prepares three cups of matcha, and Gintoki wastes no time in aggressively eating as many as he can. “So,” he mumbles around a mouthful of dough, “you’re back. Did you go on a long journey to find yourself or some bullshit like that?”

Takasugi takes a deep, dignified drink of his tea. “I did it to get away from the prattling of idiots like you.”

“And did you find what you were looking for?”

Trust Gintoki to ask the poison-barbed questions without meaning to; it’s a specialty of his, even after all this time, and Takasugi allows himself a hollow laugh. At least he knows the answer now. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I did.”

“That’s a change,” mutters Gintoki, and takes an obscenely loud slurp of his tea as if to spite Takasugi’s earlier, more dignified sip. “Shinpachi, I keep telling you to get some strawberry milk in this place, it’s got calcium for growing bones. And the kids will love it.”

“And I keep saying you’re welcome to bring it up with Ane-ue.”

Even Gintoki sees it’s a lost cause, and turns back to Takasugi. “Am I going to be seeing more of you around then? Just so I know to sharpen my sword in advance.”

“Unfortunately for you, yes.” Takasugi, though he wouldn’t admit it aloud, has grown fond of the children.

“Good.” Gintoki stuffs another manju into his mouth. “More time to humiliate you in front of your brats.”

“And when did they become mine?”

“C’mon, that girl -- what was her name? She’s totally teacher’s pet.”

Takasugi’s eyebrow twitches, and he grabs the last bun. “Her name is Ayako, and I distinctly remember _you_ being Shouyou’s favourite. Sensei was simply too nice to say so.”   

Gintoki goes quiet for a moment. But what Takasugi suspects might be dangerous levels of sentimentality turns out just to be the other man swallowing the last of his manju. “I don’t think so,” Gintoki says. “We were all his favourites, in a way. He let us get away with a lot of shit that the others wouldn’t have. And most of that stuff was your fault, being the hot-headed one.”

Strangely, Takasugi doesn’t feel like disputing Gintoki’s characterisation. It’s rare enough that they’d be able to reminisce about Shouyou, instead of Utsuro. “I never thought you’d be a teacher,” Gintoki continues. “Or me, really. Back then, we were just dirty brats and outcasts who everyone said wouldn’t amount to anything, or that if we did, it wouldn’t be anything good. And look at us now.”

“Still up to no good, but respectably.”  

Gintoki laughs, in a fleetingly sentimental way. It’s the same Gintoki yet not -- the uncommon kindness Takasugi had never seen, or rather, that he hadn’t allowed himself to see; a man who’d long ago owned his mistakes and suffered their consequences. The tea has gone cold. Shinpachi stands, and shows Gintoki to the door. Takasugi exchanges a quiet glance with him as he goes, and mutual understanding passes between them. _This is how it is now._  

Eventually, Shinpachi comes back to walk him to the dojo entrance. “I’m glad you two had such fun today. Do you think you’d be up for teaching alongside Gin-san in future?”

Takasugi laughs at that one, genuinely amused. “Far, far off into the future, and even then, it’s still a maybe.” They stop at the gate, and seriousness overtakes Shinpachi’s expression.  

“You know the students like you as you are, right? You’re the Gardener to them.” He pauses, fiddling with his glasses. “And I hope I’m not overstepping here, but are you ever going to tell them who you were?”

Wouldn’t that be something, Takasugi thinks. That he would even have the choice to do so. “Maybe,” he replies, then amends it to, “yes, when they’re ready.” He can imagine it, their surprise or not-surprise, and Gintoki’s idiot face hovering in the background, all of it a vivid tableau that he could not have imagined three years ago.

Shinpachi smiles, and raises a hand in farewell. “Travel safely.”

The open road unrolls at his feet, the tracks of the people who’ve come before him still scored into the mud. The beast, asleep for so long, might never wake up again. And Takasugi is fine with that.  

  



	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been overwhelmed by the reception for this fic, and I can't thank everyone enough for their kudos and comments. It was an absolute joy to write, and an even greater joy to share with such a wonderful audience :') I hope you all enjoy the epilogue!

The garden continues to grow under his care and with Shinpachi’s help, and before long there’s nothing more than routine maintenance to do, and less reason to spend much time outdoors. Soon, Takasugi finds himself enjoying his garden from within the house more often than working in it.

He isn’t getting any younger or his joints any smoother, and every passing day brings him closer to the ground. Still, there’s a while to go yet, and the colours of his garden to enliven his days -- the pink wash of sakura in spring, the yellow of gingko in fall, the sharp green of the pine in deep summer. On hot, humid days, the honey bees buzz as they go about their work; by evening, the cicadas scratch their undulating songs. All the world has never been rounder to him, and he wonders if he missed its fullness howling at the moon.

In want of something to pass the time, Takasugi begins clearing out the more obscure of the previous owners’ belongings, those that had languished at the bottom of trunks and drawers. One day, he stumbles across a lacquered chest. Inside it is an inkstone and set of brushes, lightly used but still serviceable. Takasugi’s hands itch, memory blooming of afternoons spent copying Shouyou’s elegant script.

He had not taken to calligraphy until much later in life, partly the result of having been forced into lessons as a child. The young Takasugi found it tedious; had hated how the tools of such a fine art seemed only to imprison him in the beautiful, dead characters his tutors commanded he copy. Shouyou’s writing had swooped and soared, danced across the page as easily as his long hair on a breeze, carrying an otherworldliness Takasugi had known he would fall short of in his own writing.

Older, wearier, not yet wiser, he prepares a fresh stack of paper.

The technique returns to him in scraps and several scrunched up attempts, but he persists. The style he finally commands is of him, for him, grounded strokes and airy flicks. When he writes now, it’s like dipping a brush into his soul and streaking it black across white, not quite blood and not quite ink, but something in between. He reaches back through time to what he hated, what he loved; brings them together into the present, laying it down for the future.

 

+++

 

One morning at the tail-end of autumn, Shinpachi comes trudging through the front door with a taste of spring. While they wait for the sakura herbal tea to steep, Shinpachi looks around the sitting room at the many scrolls on display.

“You do calligraphy, Takasugi-san?” He sounds hoarse, coughing a little, and gratefully accepts the tea pushed his way. “I’m sorry, I ran some errands in the rain yesterday.”

“A little,” Takasugi replies. For the briefest of moments, he'd seen the other’s eyes mist over and a softness overtake his features. After finishing their tea and discussing its taste, he lets Shinpachi inspect the pieces more closely. With a keen eye for detail, Shinpachi moves carefully from work to work, taking the time to study every brushstroke. One work, consisting of a single ideogram meaning ‘way’, holds his attention the longest. “You’re very talented,” he eventually concludes. “And, as to be expected of you, highly disciplined.”  

“Do you practice calligraphy yourself?”

“No, but some of my students do. You know, I think they’d be rather interested if --”

“Shinpachi.”

He stops at that, almost guiltily. The same look from before softens his face. “They’re not the only ones you know who do calligraphy, are they?”

Shinpachi lowers his eyes, his next words measured. “A long time ago, my father did.”

If what he expects is a silent, stoic acknowledgement or an outright dismissal, Takasugi is set to disappoint. He refills the teapot and pours them another two cups. “Tell me about him.”

Taken aback, a flurry of emotions crosses Shinpachi’s face. Uncertainty is the strongest; a hesitation, Takasugi surmises, must be years in the making. “Is it so surprising to want to know about the man whose inheritance you carry?”

The look Shinpachi gives him says _yes,_ as if he’d never expected anyone outside his family to take an interest in it.

“Tell me,” Takasugi repeats. Birdsong bursts from outside. Quietly, Shinpachi reaches for his tea, and takes a long sip. “Father taught me what it meant to follow the way of the samurai. Everything I am today started with him.”

The words trickle, and then pour from Shinpachi, about a man whose shadow was as long as his footsteps were deep, how his loss had marked his son’s earliest days; a man who is more memory than reality by now, albeit a precious one, treasured and cherished as surely as Takasugi remembers his own teacher. The world becomes rounder still, and he is glad to see it for its fullness now rather than later.

Takasugi refills several more pots of tea before the afternoon is over, and when finally the words run dry, he takes down the piece that had so caught Shinpachi’s interest, and presents it to him. “A gift,” he says, coughing to cover the sudden itch in his throat.

“Thank you,” Shinpachi murmurs, and places it on the table. Then he leans forward, and hugs him. _Oh,_ thinks Takasugi, a rush of warmth and belonging swelling in his chest like sunlight through water. _It wasn’t really a mistake to have let him in, after all._ And he hugs Shinpachi back. 

Takasugi thinks of the first time he’d seen him: a scrap of a boy, white knuckled and trembling, filled more with bravery than skill. Even now, wiping away tears, he still looks so soft -- Gintoki’s disciple who is his opposite in almost every way, except where it matters: the strength of his soul, the same burning eyes, footsteps firm on his own path. Shouyou’s legacy is safe, assured, and there’s nothing for Takasugi to guard any longer. Just a garden he can cultivate for himself.

 

+++

 

Before he knows it, the lichens and moss that had been islands of green sprawl like oceans across their rocks. At some point, he’d dug up a book of poems in his spring cleaning, and took to writing out his favourites, letting the motions soothe him like the ocean over the seabed.  

Another Christmas and New Year pass amiably, Shinpachi paying him a brief visit. The snow settles atop the trees in their deep sleep, and when the house is empty again, Takasugi finds himself struggling to accept that solitude doesn’t suit him like it does the light dusting of white on the lichen, turning the garden picture perfect.

He hasn’t yet consented to teaching lessons with Gintoki, though he doesn’t mind sharing the same space with him. If the children liked Gintoki, they love Gin-chan and Gardener-san’s tales of childhood bravado (often featuring the long-haired idiot called Zura), even the occasional story from the lighter days of the Joui war.

They sometimes run into each other on the street, passing not as ships in the night, but ships coming to port -- each on their own journey, but to the same destination (more or less). Though Takasugi is loathe to say they’re best friends, they _are_ friends, and he could not have expected anything more. All they’ve done is settled their differences, then settled down.

So it surprises him one fine morning to see a familiar mop of silver hair coming down the path.

“Don’t think I’m here for you,” Gintoki grunts, waving a tin. “From Shinpachi. He’s taking Otae’s classes for a couple of days while she’s on holiday with Kyuubei. So he sent me instead. Me! Gin-san, the errand boy!” He rattles the tin furiously. “This is elder abuse, that’s what it is. I’m a veteran now. Can’t I get any respect around here?”

“You should’ve known better than to come to me for that,” Takasugi says.  

The interior of the house is a welcome relief from the rising heat of the morning. On the table where he normally sets out refreshments for Shinpachi is a carafe of water that he’d earlier prepared, lemon slices and ice cubes drifting at the top. “That’s not for you.”

“Thanks.” Gintoki pours himself a glass, throwing it back in one lip-smacking gulp.

“You see? Who would respect you with manners like that?” Takasugi inspects the contents of the tin (some more of that sakura herbal tea along with a handwritten note of apology from Shinpachi for anything Gintoki might do), listening to said headache clattering around the kitchen as if he owned the place.

Takasugi is not entirely sure why Gintoki’s presence in his own home doesn’t enervate him to the point of madness. Having his interior decoration and taste in furniture insulted is… expected. Normal. This is how they’ve always behaved around each other without an audience. Gintoki’s act simply slots in alongside the vase of flowers that seem to be his current target of scorn.

That’s just Gintoki. There’s no changing him, and no changing Takasugi either. They did their growing up before the war, their changing in the midst of it, and now they’re settling into the slipstream, flashing like fish scales down the river of time to its end, golden or silver.

“When you’re done demonstrating your boorish disregard of the arts, you might want to see the garden.”

“-- no one hangs calligraphy up anymore -- what?” A suspicious pause. Then a bellow of laughter. “Let’s see what you got, then.”  

Typically, Gintoki says the garden is terrible and pointless; lacking organisation, a rambling, lazy heap of cuttings and plants broken by a self-indulgent water feature. “What’s the point of a single pine tree?” he demands, and then goes quiet. “Never mind.”

Takasugi fetches a spade from the shed and tosses it at a surprised Gintoki. “If you’re filling in for Shinpachi today, then do some honest work for once in your life.”

“When have I ever not?” Gintoki protests, and rolls up his sleeves. “This garden is no match for me.”  

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve made it to the end through my highly questionable metaphors, thank you! A few other acknowledgements are in order:  
> \- Inspiration credits go to the poem [Believe This](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55163/believe-this) by Richard Levine and Tan Twan Eng’s novel "The Garden of Evening Mists", which gave me all I needed to know on the philosophy of Japanese garden design. (It’s also an excellent read for anyone interested in Malaysian history)  
> \- I owe Liatheus a great debt of gratitude for the many wonderful ideas she came up with in our brainstorming sessions last year, some of which I’ve used here (specifically the [soba seed stem tea](https://www.lupicia.com.au/49/complete-herbal-tea-catalogue/346/soba-seed-stem-tea), and some of the plants in Sugi’s garden.)  
> \- Yes, there is an Anne Carson reference from her poem [The Glass Essay](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48636/the-glass-essay): You remember too much, / my mother said to me recently. / Why hold onto all that? And I said, / Where can I put it down? ... which is mirrored here: "But where else does his old teacher expect Takasugi to place those old enmities, the jadedness carved from years of bitter experience? Where can he put them down?"
> 
> I wrote an epilogue of sorts that I cut for length. I know this fic is niche enough as it is, so if anyone by chance would like to read it, let me know and I'd be glad to post it. As always, comments and kudos are much appreciated <3


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